"Activate mail service on this domain" button is greyed out for a domain in Plesk

Kuzma Ivanov

Updated April 16, 2026 03:56

Plesk for Windows Plesk for Linux kb: technical

Applicable to:

Mail service is disabled for a domain in Plesk at Domains > example.com > Mail > Mail Settings and it is not possible to enable it through the interface, because the Activate mail service on domain button is greyed out.
Disabling/enabling the mail service for the domain via a command-line interface does not fix the issue:

# plesk bin mail --off example.com

# plesk bin mail --on example.com

Database inconsistency.

Connect to your Plesk server via SSH (Linux) / via RDP (Windows Server).
Create a backup of the Plesk database:
- Plesk for Linux
  
  # plesk db dump psa > /root/psa_backup.sql
- Plesk for Windows
  
  Note: On Windows Server, start a command prompt as an Administrator.
  
  C:\> plesk db dump psa > C:\psa_backup.sql
Access the Plesk database in MySQL:

# plesk db
Find ID with disabled mail service using the domain name (in the example below: domain name -example.com, ID - 167):

MYSQL_LIN: mysql> select id from DomainServices where type='mail' and dom_id=(select id from domains where name='example.com');
+-----+
| id |
+-----+
| 167 |
+-----+
Change mail service status using id from previous step:

MYSQL_LIN: mysql> update DomainServices set status=0 where type='mail' and id=167;

Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
Exist MySQL:

MYSQL_LIN: mysql> exit
Disable and enable the mail service for the subscription at Plesk > Subscriptions > example.com > Mail > Mail Settings.